Tufts resident assistants voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to form a union. The 99–3 vote, representing a 72% turnout from RAs, established the United Labor of Tufts Residents Assistants under the Local 153 branch of the Office and Professional Employees International Union, a union of over 100,000 workers nationwide.
The union bid represents the latest development in a yearslong struggle between university administrators and resident assistants, who now seek recognition from the National Labor Relations Board.
Although Tufts does not have a neuroscience major, students are finding alternative ways to get involved and build connections in the field. NeuroNetwork, the largest undergraduate neuroscience organization on campus, aims to expose interested undergraduate students to neuroscience by building relationships with labs and students pursuing neuroscience at the Tufts Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.
A spirit of experimentation permeates the history of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, formerly named School of Drawing and Painting, since its inception in 1876, just 22 years after Tufts enrolled its first class. Collaboration between the schools has embodied this spirit from 1945 through their merging in 2015, offering valuable lessons on the importance of experimentation and adaptability at a critical reflection point in higher education.
The pandemic has forced a reckoning in all aspects of education. While initially blindsiding educators and administrators across the world, looking back on the past two years, this process seems to have been a long time coming. COVID-19’s impacts on education continue to devastate, but they have also revealed the possibility of a new way forward — a more thoughtful, if complicated, way of teaching that emphasizes individual learning styles and allows experimentation to lead the way.
The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life Distinguished Speaker Series will be renamed the Alan and Susan Solomont Distinguished Speaker Series in honor of Dean Alan Solomont (A’70) and his wife, Susan. The renaming will be announced today at the final Distinguished Speaker Series event of the semester, hosting primatologist Jane Goodall. Solomont is retiring at the end of the semester after seven years in the role of dean and a lifetime of involvement with Tufts University, starting with his undergraduate years.
Advocates for Quality Aging, a Tufts' student group that provides geriatric volunteer opportunities targeted at pre-health students, began in fall 2020 as a health care blog featuring interviews with geriatric health care providers, social workers and others in the industry. Founder Paul Ly wanted to give pre-health students at Tufts an idea of what life was like for those serving the geriatric community.
Plans to establish a Universalist school endured many starts and stops, but eventually a Board of Trustees, which included Ballou, was created to oversee the project and bring it to fruition. Ballou was a natural addition to the Board, as he had contributed to the rise of Universalism in the country.
The idiosyncratic failings of the U.S. health care system have always been present in the life of Alecia McGregor, assistant professor of community health. McGregor was born in a working-class North Miami, Fla. neighborhood to Jamaican immigrants, and government support was critically important to her family’s well-being.
Construction for the new and improved Charlotte and William Bloomberg Medford Public Library is set to end in May at its historic location on 111 High Street, which has housed every iteration of the library since 1875.
